Complicated but realistic classic

1st, the reader needs to know
that Dashiell Hammett had
experience as a p.i. in real life. So, he brings profesional
knowledge to his novels.

2nd, the reader needs to realize that this book was published in 1929, aka during the
U.S.'s (constitution-enshrined!)
national Prohibition of alcohol manufacture, importation, transportation, sale, possession, and consumption. With no-
Prohibition Canada easy to travel to and from along the shared 5,500+ miles-long border, a number of organized crime
groups sprung up to control the
smuggling and distribution of
Canadian alcohol into and within America. (N.B. The families in control of Canadian manufacture and provision of this massive quantity of alcohol developed into many of Canada's wealthiest dynasties. And, today,
at least one of the surviving companies boasts [in a video commercial] of its history of supplying product to American smugglers.)

3rd, the reader needs to understand that the alcohol-providing, American organized
crime groups (who, in addition to smuggling in Canadian alcohol, manufactured low-quality
versions within the U.S.) were
not only involved in an ongoing
war amongst themselves for
control of alcoholic beverages; they controlled numerous American towns and
cities, through bribery, threat,
physical attacks, and murder.

Put these 3 facts together,
and you end up with situations extremely similar to those
depicted in this Dashiell
Hammett novel.

Add in Hammett's depiction of his main character (a p.i.) as a complicated human complete
with varying emotions and moral
dilemas, and the result = this book is VERY
realistic.

Yes, you have to pay attention in
order to remember with whom
each main character is aligned. (A few times, I had to ask Alexa to rewind a bit, thanks to my having “zoned out" for the preceding few minutes. This book definitely isn’t one suited to having on in the background while you’re driving or doing a task requiring similar attentiveness.) But, those alliances and the characters' roles and personal attributes help make the novel very realistic.

Thus, Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest is worth the required attentiveness of its audio readers.

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1 person found this helpful

Dashiell Hammett

This authors characters jump ragtime off the pages maybe I watched to many old movies but theses people felt like they were here with me the action in the book can me with them the narrator was fabulous he fit right into the whole scene I was was living thr throughout the novel it was fabulous read for me so enjoyable

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Awesome

Performance was spot on.
Classic noir story.
Struggled to finish at some points but worth finishing.

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2 people found this helpful

Ferrone is an A+ Narrator!!

Audible made a great choice to narrate a grim hardboiled detective noir, with the gravelly-voiced Richard Ferrone giving us the tale that might have inspired Akira Kurosawa’s legendary film, “Yojimbo,” which in turn inspired such films as include Sergio Leone's “A Fistful of Dollars”and Walter Hill's “Last Man Standing.” The main character would also become the prototype of every “hardboiled” dick that followed in the genre. It’s a wild tale of a detective trying to fix the corrupt town of Personville, while he himself is succumbing to the corruption that “Poisonville” is inundated with: mobsters, rum-runners, dirty cops, et al. It’s a wild ride and a fun one.

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Honestly? Hard To Follow

I really wanted to like this book. Dashiell Hammett provides brilliant 1920s Pulp Detective fare: hardboiled protagonists, women of questionable morals, underground gambling, greed & betrayals, crooked cops, shootouts and murders.. The dialogue is gritty, the descriptions are mind's-eye vivid, and the characters are something out of a Bogart or Cagney film.
Unfortunately, none of the elements seem connected. By the end of the book, I still had no idea how the events were supposed to come together to tell a story. Hammett purports to deliver a tale about duplicity in the fictional city of  'Poisonville', but has such a scatterbrained plot that I got virtually nothing out of the book (other than some clever action scenes and some fascinating character exposition).

The recording is improved considerably by the reading by Richard Ferrone. He reads a little too slowly (consume this book at 1.10X), but Ferrone's diction, timbre, cadence, tone, and voice-acting are exemplary. Blackstone Audio did a brilliant job casting the project.

Taken in toto, I rate 'Red Harvest' 4.5 stars out of 10. As a free option in the 'Plus' catalogue for subscribers, it was a distracting few hours for a fan of old-school Private Dick literature - but I wouldn't spend a Credit on it.

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